What’s even more troubling, is the fact that Mel Gibson’s character is behind these controversial moments.

Gibson’s casting in the movie was a shock to many considering his volatile history.

The actor and director is known for having made shocking anti-Semitic, misogynistic and racist remarks towards police officers and in 2011, was sentenced to 30 months probation after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of battering his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.

Though director and writer Sean Anders has ensured that none of the actor’s toxic masculinity is missing from his role as Kurt in Daddy’s Home 2.

The original film followed Mark Wahlberg’s Dusty and his rivalry with his two children’s step-dad Brad (Will Ferrell) but the sequel centres on his absentee father Kurt’s mission to break up their blended family harmony at Christmas.

This comes in the form of belittling Brad’s touchy-feely relationship with his own father (played by John Lithgow), perpetuating sexist notions when it comes to gender roles in the family, and encouraging a narrow-minded view as to what being a man and father is meant to be.

Kurt’s views on masculinity are toxic (Picture: Paramount Pictures)

While Kurt does his best to throw a spanner into the works between the co-dads, his worst offences come through his interactions with his grandchildren.

First he manipulates his grandson Dylan into asking Santa Claus for a gun for Christmas despite the kid obviously not wanting one.

Thankfully, step-granddad Don manages to get Dylan to admit he does not actually want to hurt animals or have a firearm for Christmas.

This gun narrative could have ended there but instead they chose to turn it into an odd moment for feminism.

When their granddaughter Megan says she wants the gun instead, Kurt says in true sexist fashion that girls don’t hunt, they just cook what the men have hunted.

Megan’s mum Sara (Linda Cardellini) chooses this moment to call out his sexism and by the next scene her child is carrying a gun, dressed in camouflage gear and getting ready to shoot a turkey.

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She ends up shooting her grandpa Kurt and two turkeys in disturbing fashion, without showing any remorse for her actions.

In the hospital scene later, she brags about her efforts and gets a nurse to guess which one she killed out of her grandad and a turkey.

Given the vast amount of mass shootings in the last few years – there have been 394 in 2017 so far – it certainly makes you question why a family movie would show a child shooting a family member with no apparent consequences – especially when accidental gun deaths involving children are such a major problem in the US.

According to gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety, 253 children under 18 have accidentally shot someone this year. That’s why it’s pretty poor taste to make light of children using guns in a family comedy that young kids are expected to watch.

Mel Gibson’s character is poison in Daddy’s Home 2 (Picture: Paramount Pictures)

The same goes for the encouragement of a boy to sexually assault a girl. Kurt tells Dylan to just go ahead and kiss the girl he fancies and then slap her rear afterwards in celebration.

He does so but there are no ramifications for the blatantly inappropriate behaviour. The adults watching are more concerned with who Dylan kissed rather than the fact that he kissed the girl without her consent and assaulted her after.

These are young children too, who haven’t even gone through puberty yet but are being pressured to engage in romantic activity despite obviously not being ready for it.

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The result of Dylan’s impropriety? He gets a line of kids queueing up to kiss him under the mistletoe.

When women are coming forward with their own harrowing stories, it’s rather disgusting to see a child be encouraged to do the same in a family comedy.

Even worse when the person playing the character instigating these moments is someone as historically reprehensible as Mel Gibson.

Comedy has always been able to push the boundaries of what is socially acceptable and in good taste, but it makes a difference when the audience is unable to understand the ramifications of such inappropriate actions.

Adults watching Daddy’s Home 2 have perspective when it comes to gun crime and sexual harassment.

The majority of us can watch the film and understand that actually giving a child a gun is bad, shooting a person is bad and spanking a young girl on the ass after forcing a kiss on her is also very bad.

A lot of children under the age of 12 may not understand that, especially when the writers haven’t made any obvious effort to show that these incidents are actually pretty bad and should not be imitated.

Since 2002, the 12A film classification has been in use allowing parents to take their children of any age to see movies that may not really be appropriate for them to watch.

This is more than just a three-year-old being taken to see the new Marvel movie; it’s primary school kids watching a horror movie like 10 Cloverfield Lane or a rather adult comedy like Daddy’s Home 2, which is described as having moderate bad language and innuendo but no mention of violence despite a child shooting their grandfather, and said grandfather wrestling with his son.

There are plenty of studies that show the psychological effect film can have on children, both in a positive and negative way, but often parents rely too heavily on an imperfect film classification system to help them decide what is appropriate for their children to watch.

When it comes to Daddy’s Home 2, no child younger than 12 should be watching it, no matter how family-friendly the movie’s marketing wants you to think it is.